Transparent polymeric or plastic films are known to be adhesively applied to the surfaces of transparent glass windows for purposes including window tinting, UV light filtering, maintenance of window screen integrity, and protection against inward projections of glass fragments and shards upon window breakage. Where additional protective measures are sought, transparent window films having thicknesses up to 400 micrometers or 1/62″ are known to be adhesively applied to glass window surfaces, such thicker film appliques maintaining the integrity of the window glass as a barrier in events such as bomb blasts or impacts with storm driven debris.
Such thicker window film appliques are known to provide some protection against purposeful breakage by a burglar. However, such appliques by themselves are only marginally effective because burglars may consciously and purposefully direct strikes against the glass at and about its edges, breaking the window along its juncture with the window's frame. Such directed breakage by a burglar tends to inwardly separate both the glass window and its reinforcing film applique from the window frame, allowing the burglar's entry.
In order to enhance such thickened window film appliques' capacity for resisting impacts and breakage, trim strips are known to be provided and adhesively applied about the periphery of a film reinforced window. Such trim strips provide a structural reinforcing bridge or tie between the film which reinforces the window and the window's peripheral frame. Such additional window reinforcing trim strips are effective in maintaining a glass window's ability to remain in place and to continue to function as a screen or barrier upon experiencing a bomb blast or storm debris impacts. However, installations of such adhesively applied peripheral trim continue to be only marginally effective against purposeful efforts by burglars to gain access to buildings via window breakage. Such adhesively applied trim pieces typically include weak points at mitered corners, and burglars upon seeing such reinforcing trim, may concentrate blows at the window's corners. The typically mitered corners of such adhesively applied reinforcing trim tend to interrupt the structural continuity of the reinforcing trim about the periphery of the film reinforced window. Such mitered corners also undesirably invite a burglar's impacts at the window's corners and allow such impacts to successfully inwardly deflect the reinforced window.
The instant inventive window reinforcing assembly solves or ameliorates the problems, defects, and deficiencies described above, by incorporating within a polymeric film window reinforcement system, a specialized corner piece which markedly lessens corner zone structural weaknesses, and which effectively frustrates a burglar's efforts to break the reinforced window at the window's corner.